leimy2k: > On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Don Stewart <d...@galois.com> wrote: > >> leimy2k: >> > >> > >> > On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 8:40 PM, Don Stewart <d...@galois.com> wrote: >> > >> > leimy2k: >> > > I actually need little endian encoding... wondering if anyone else >> hit >> > this >> > > with Data.Binary. (because I'm working with Bell Lab's 9P protocol >> which >> > does >> > > encode things on the network in little-endian order). >> > > >> > > Anyone got some "tricks" for this? >> > >> > Yes! >> > There are big, little and host-endian primitives in the Get/Put >> monads. >> > >> > >> http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/binary/0.5.0.1/doc/html/ >> > Data-Binary-Put.html#v%3AputWord16le >> > >> > You can use these to build encoders directly. >> > >> > >> > Cool... I just have to write my own encoder and decoder now. >> > >> > As a request could we get encodeLe decodeLe for a later version of this >> > library? :-) That'd be totally awesome. >> >> Oh, you mean entirely different instances for all the current ones, that >> use LE encodings? >> > > Well the library is leaning towards "Network Byte Order" in that it has > encode/decode that only encode/decode for Big Endian. > > Us folks who have to do little endian all now have to write our own > encoding/decoding :-) > > I'm speaking specifically of the encode/decode functions. I have no idea > how they're implemented.
The encode/decode functions just call the runGet/runPut functions for whatever is being encoded or decoded to combined with the get/put functions from the Binary instance. The endian-ness is entirely determined by the Binary instance for the data type you're encoding/decoding, not anything in the encode/decode functions themselves. For data types you define, you can make the Binary instance LE standard (although it may not be a good idea) by using the little-endian primitives Don mentioned. For built-in types, if you want to use a different endian-ness, you can make new get/put functions then call runGet/runPut on those directly. You won't be able to redefine the Binary instances, but if you'll be doing this with a lot of different types you could make your own BinaryLE class like this: class BinaryLE t where putLE :: t -> Put getLE :: Get t encodeLE :: BinaryLE a => a -> ByteString encodeLE = runPut . putLE decodeLE :: BinaryLE a => ByteString -> a decodeLE = runGet getLE I've done some work with Binary and little-endian, and this bias never really bothered me (I think it's actually a host-endian bias, could be mistaken). I was using my own data types so I had to make my own custom Binary instances, which I would have had to do anyway. The data format specified little-endian, so making the Binary instance LE-standard seemed appropriate. You'd only need to re-make custom get/put functions if you're using types that already have Binary instances, and you intend to manipulate the data outside of Haskell. Does that describe your situation? John _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
